1 of 1- Chrisphen
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Technology cont'd - the golden age of Minidisc
I was initially against them. What was wrong with carts? After some learning, they turned out to be rad. Even as a consumer-level thing they were great, but then Sony had to skullfuck their own innovative efforts with terrible software to placate the intellectual property rights warriors in their content division. So it goes.
- Peter the K
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Re: Technology cont'd - the golden age of Minidisc
I initially got into minidiscs in 1998 to record concerts. The tech was cool but Sony, as they tend to, likes to cripple their technology to the point where it becomes user hostile.
I've since moved onto a Sony PCM-10 which has become my workhorse for a lot of projects. It's actually an amazing digital recorder. So what does Sony go and do? They discontinue it.
- Mike Cleaver
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Re: Technology cont'd - the golden age of Minidisc
This has been Sony's problem since the beginning.
They made everything proprietary.
Beta was the best videotape system, far surpassing VHS in technical quality but refusing to license others to manufacture recorders and players until it was already being overshadowed by VHS, it was doomed to fail.
The Elcaset was another disaster and didn't last very long.
Same with the mini-disc.
Only two stations I ever worked at had them and no one liked them.
Computers quickly erased them from use as well.
At one station where I worked, they immediately jumped on the so called "latest" recording technology as it was unveiled.
The basement was a virtual museum of failed recording technology, thousands of dollars invested in stuff that had a useful life of usually less than two years, all of it left rusting in a damp underground room.
- Peter the K
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Re: Technology cont'd - the golden age of Minidisc
Exactly. Sony has this thing about protecting their interests by keeping things proprietary and winding up shooting themselves in the foot in the process.
There was also one rather nasty problem with MDs that could lead to disaster. When you finished recording and pressed the "stop" button, the table of contents on the disc had to be updated. If the recorder was bumped or the battery ran out during this process, you basically lost _EVERYTHING_ on the disc. Sony actually had a recovery service that you could send your dead discs (and $25) to and they would try to recover it -- which could take months if you're lucky. I've zapped a disc this way once. Really depressing when that happens.
I know minidisc was used for a time in a few news operations and I'm curious if they ever had that happen to them?
- RadioActive
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Re: Technology cont'd - the golden age of Minidisc
Mike Cleaver wrote:
This has been Sony's problem since the beginning.
They made everything proprietary.
Isn't that exactly what Apple is doing? Seems to work fine for them! Odd how one company makes a go of the 'protect your own' thing while the other messes it up completely.
The Elcaset was another disaster and didn't last very long.
Ah, ye olde Elcaset. The very first Toronto radio newsroom I worked in had one of these contraptions and while they were good for recording long news feeds in fairly decent quality, they were a pain to cue up and/or find the particular cut you were looking for. And you still had to transfer them to reel anyway if you wanted to edit anything. Plus getting the actual 'tapes' to use in it meant there was only one source and that, of course, meant Sony controlled the price.
It was mostly totally useless and I never did figure out why they bought it in the first place. However I did find one special project for it. Long before the days of streaming music, MP3 players or even Walkmans, I would patch a radio feed into the machine, hit record, and let it gather music for about an hour. Then when I had some down time, I always had something to listen to while working overnights.
It was only the late 70s but considering how far technology has come, it seems like centuries ago.
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Last edited by RadioActive (May 22, 2018 4:05 pm)